OUR OPINION: Top state officials again trying to sabotage legal pot

Saturday

Will our elected officials on Beacon Hill ever get it into their heads that Massachusetts voters said they want to go to a store and buy marijuana just like any other retail product?

Those voters heard all the negative arguments, and decided that selling marijuana is not going to bring down the republic, send hordes of now gray-haired hippies running naked through the streets or bring punishments of the Sodom and Gomorrah variety crashing down on the commonwealth. But opponents of legalized marijuana are still putting up roadblocks. The latest is the Marijuana Control Commission, which in its present form is a creation of the Legislature, not the people.

Thanks to the governor, the attorney general and the state treasurer, four of the five members recently appointed to this commission are vehement and public opponents of letting anyone buy marijuana. The makeup of the commission is deplorable.

It was in the 1911 that Massachusetts became the first state in the nation to make the sale of marijuana – “Indian hemp” as it was called then – illegal. On Nov. 8, 2016, people in 72 percent of Massachusetts cities and town changed that by voting for ballot Question 4. They said it should be legal to sell marijuana and anyone who wanted to buy it for personal use should be able to do so. That voter-approved law (our legislators didn’t have the backbone to even draft a law addressing legalization) was supposed to go into effect on Jan. 1 of 2018. Opponents immediately screamed that was not enough time, and, within a month, Gov. Charlie Baker signed a law putting off legal sales for six months, until July 1 of next year.

But the opponents were hardly finished with the law that 54 percent of the state’s voters had approved. By the end of July, they had fashioned a revised version that gave some cities and towns an easy way to block marijuana sales, nearly doubled the 12 percent tax on marijuana that voters had said was OK and expanded the Marijuana Control Commission from three to five members to give Gov. Baker and Attorney General Maura Healey, both strong and vocal opponents, control of four of the five seats on the commission.

The law does require board member to have specific qualifications -- financial background, public health knowledge, management experience and the like. Those requirements could have been met by people who said they supported Question 4 last November. Instead, four of the five members say they voted against Question 4. They are, by in large, people who believe Big Brother knows more about what is good for you than you do. The governor, the treasurer and the attorney general should be ashamed for violating again the expressed will of the people of the state.

As it stands now, the first license to sell retail marijuana in the state is supposed to be issued by July 1 of next year. Don’t bet on it. The Cannabis Control Commission is supposed to promulgate regulations covering roughly three dozen areas including who can apply for a license to sell marijuana, advertising, labeling and content of edibles containing marijuana or marijuana oil and rules for cultivation and manufacturing facilities.

All these regulations are supposed to be finished by March 15, 2018, and by April 1 the commission is support to be accepting applications for owning and running marijuana stores. To do this, people who pushed for retail marijuana sales say the commission will need $10 million. The Legislature gave the commission a budget of $2.3 million for the year. If you think you are going to buy marijuana at a store in Massachusetts next July, that’s a pipe dream.

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